Poetry Review: Carrie Murphy’s Fat Daisies

I’ve been catching myself repeating, “It’s a white girl’s book about being a white girl.” This earworm line comes from “ROYGBIV” in Fat Daisies by Carrie Murphy, a terrific book of poems from Big Lucks Press. Poems about labor and labor. Poems that describe the world newborns enter today. Poems on the verge of eating a salad or dog hair. Poems that acknowledge privilege, racism, and the violence of globalization. Poems about the guilt of guilty pleasures. Poems that polish the dull of indulgence. Poems that embarrass themselves singing into the hairbrush microphone of the millennial condition. So what kind of book is it?

1.

It’s a meta ass book about everyone’s donuts.

2.

It’s a basic bitch book about introvert power and our tender, mewling little moment.

3.

It’s fracking & foibles & fairies about how they’re going to get their babies out of their bodies.

4.

It’s twenty asses’ book about actual cupcakes.

5.

It’s a bad feminist book yelling LOUDNESS.

6.

It’s an admirably calloused book glugging yogurt.

7.

It’s just bodies with zines.

8.

It’s instyle jeans about privilege: opalescent.

9.

It’s hashtag activism filled with shimmers.

10.

It’s vulnerable ankles about magical thinking.

11.

It’s fear amplified about pinnacleism.

12.

It bets its gold teeth that fat daisies sneeze or puke or fuck or pee out hormonal residue every month so as not to clutter the planet.

13.

It’s the lumps I love about Truth or Consequences.

14.

It’s sugar & we, a buttwarm book, about gigantic smallness.

15.

It represents cheeseburgers.

16.

It’s a nice moms’ & weird moms’ & scary moms’ book about something honeyed, like the boutonnier of the internet, I mean cyber stalkers slipping from the crown of the world.

17.

It’s a scuffed cowgirl book about girl babies from China.

18.

It’s memorize & trash, dip lower & leak.

19.

It’s a sharp and sharpening book about soft bullets.

20.

It’s a lactation course & that’s what makes me a perfect American.

21.

It’s a wonky book about my Feminazi mouth, .

22.

It pancakes out, babyless.

23.

It’s a kinda country book about loud & planetary nice poems.

24.

& o, god, it’s gigantic feelings about the un-ugly.

The above list was composed of words and phrases taken from Fat Daisies. You can pluck your own daisies from Big Lucks Books.

em kaldenbaugh is a poet, collage maker and librarian. They live in Philadelphia, PA, surrounded by floral prints. Their work has appeared in MISTRESS, Alien Mouth, and Pleasure Editions.

This story had some neat little turns that keeps the reader involved. I loved the "snarkiness" of the main character and her humorous observations. And there is some nice development of a couple of minor characters, whom we meet through the narrator's observations. Cassandra and Julie really pop out of the story. Nice piece off work and a delight to read.